{"id":421,"date":"2012-03-21T21:19:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=421"},"modified":"2012-03-21T21:19:33","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T02:19:33","slug":"dweller-on-the-threshold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/21\/dweller-on-the-threshold\/","title":{"rendered":"Dweller on the Threshold"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t find it now, of course, but I was first introduced to the idea of the magical threshold and a monster that guarded it by a ritual I found on Witchvox when I was eighteen.\u00a0 I never did the ritual, of course.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t really doing<\/em> magic back then, outside of my energy work and house wards and games of psychic tag.\u00a0 Hell, I don\u2019t even remember anything about it except that it existed.<\/p>\n

In the years since, I have encountered a number of variations on the idea, but I can\u2019t really point to many of them because (until I started specifically researching them as I wrote this post) they were always incidental\u2014either to the research I was doing, to the the article I was reading, or some combination of the two.\u00a0 The fact is that I dismissed them\u2014incarnations of the Dweller on the Threshold, that is\u2014believing them to be manifestations of a Christianized anti-magic worldview.\u00a0 The way I articulated that thought became more sophisticated over the years, but I never really re-evaluated that conclusion until recently.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat it does signify is the Dweller on the Threshold without the Mystical Garden when those are driven forth therefrom who have eaten the forbidden fruit.\u201d (Waite 101)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Arthur Edward Waite explicitly equated the Devil of the Tarot with the Dweller on the Threshold.\u00a0 Phil Hine describes it as \u201cthe ordeal of facing the embodiment of fear before the adept can gain admittance to higher spheres.\u201d (source<\/a>; also, an excellent example of how I encountered the idea incidentally), and Frater Acher has an excellent article<\/a> on the subject as well.\u00a0 Actually, Frater Acher\u2019s discussion is particularly relevant, as the psychological model he suggests and the final conclusion to which he comes are essentially the thoughts which prompted this post.<\/p>\n

For all of my life I have been especially good at one thing<\/em> that has always made my life better in the long run, even as it makes it incredibly difficult for me to empathise with a great many other people.\u00a0 When I discover that a pattern of behavior isn\u2019t working, I come up with a new one and fucking change<\/em>.\u00a0 These changes of behavior have never conflicted with my sense of self; if anything, I saw them as refining myself into being more the person I want to be.\u00a0 The most dramatic examples include giving up smoking when I realized I was getting addicted; coming out of the closet almost as soon as I realized I was bi; moving to St. Louis for the sake of a more interesting life; giving up bad drinking behaviors as soon as I noticed them; going to college.<\/p>\n

I struggle with day-to-day habits, sometimes\u2014keeping up on the dishes, daily meditation\u2014but \u2026 other than that, my Will dominates my life.<\/p>\n

Despite endless evidence to the contrary, I always assumed that this was, if anything, even more true of other magical people.\u00a0 This is, of course, a classic example of the way in which we tend to assume (again, despite the evidence) that our own experiences are typical, even universal.\u00a0 As such, I was never able to really understand a supernatural figure who represented the fear of progress, the fear of crossing from one state of being into another.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, though, and uncharacteristically, I find myself at a place in my magical practice where I am afraid to move forward.<\/p>\n

Part of it is that I’ve pushed myself so far that I can no longer even imagine what lays beyond each new horizon, and that scares the shit out of me. The only places left for me to go, magically\u2014besides \u201cbase\u201d thaumaturgy\u2014are the Unchartable Territories. I’m standing on the thresholdthe sort of enlightenment which is going to prove, beyond all doubt, what I have always suspected: that everything I know is wrong. And it scares the shit out of me.<\/p>\n

Part of it is also that \u201cbase\u201d thaumaturgy I just mentioned, and the attendant power I just mentioned.\u00a0 Along with potential enlightenment, I feel like I\u2019m standing on the threshold of a kind of power that, while I always knew it existed, I never thought I would pursue.\u00a0 Insert overdone SpiderMan reference here.<\/p>\n

The fact is, I already shape the world around me.\u00a0 Everybody remakes the in their own image by their actions.\u00a0 Just by my Web of Influence<\/a>, as subtle and as reflective as that is, I reshape the course of people\u2019s lives in subtle ways.\u00a0 As I escalate my magical practice, the level of influence that I exert only increases, particularly as I increasingly work with gods and spirits to achieve my goals.\u00a0\u00a0 And I realize that, from a certain perspective, this sounds like delusional, self-aggrandized ranting.\u00a0 But it\u2019s exactly the same thing people mean when they talk about life-hacking, or the apocalypse, or being the King of Malkuth, just a little more direct.\u00a0 Having power requires that you use it, and how you use it determines, well, so very, very much.\u00a0 And if you can, sometimes you should<\/em>.\u00a0 Not just as magicians, but as people, it is our responsibility to shape the world we live in, to make it a better place. (There\u2019s that feminist witchcraft talking again.)<\/p>\n

And, as I was saying, that scares the ever-loving shit out of me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why I was so pointedly, coldly apolitical for the first twenty-five years of my life.\u00a0 Belief requires action.*<\/p>\n

So now I stand facing the Dweller on the Threshold: the incarnation of fear which I could not even comprehend six months ago.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an element of cosmic irony to this, of course.\u00a0 We seem, sometimes, to be destined to face the things we fear, or the things we swear we will never be able to understand, or that we will never do.<\/p>\n

\n

* Although I generally don\u2019t talk much about politics on this blog, this is why the Far Right scares me so much.\u00a0 Of course they fucking believe what they\u2019re saying.\u00a0 Of course they\u2019re going to create the world they idealize: the believe it\u2019s the goddamn right thing to do.\u00a0 Look at the New Apostolic Reformation, the prayer warriors: they are working to create the world they believe in.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t want to live in that world, I\u2019d better fight them.<\/p>\n

Waite, Arthur Edward. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot<\/em>. Pamela Coleman Smith Centenial. Stamford, CT: U.S. Games Systems, 2008. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t find it now, of course, but I was first introduced to the idea of the magical threshold and a monster that guarded it by a ritual I found on Witchvox when I was eighteen.\u00a0 I never did the ritual, of course.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t really doing magic back then, outside of my energy work … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[69,134,258],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-dweller-on-the-threshold","tag-keeping-score","tag-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-6N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}